I've given up fags and drugs now, baby

Welcome to Caroline's Cavalcade of Random Occurrences and Tidbits

or

What I Would Be Twittering Were I The Twittering Type, Which I'm Not


-A crow died in our backyard last weekend. It was the strangest thing. I was taking a nap (huzzah!) in our bedroom, which is at the back of the house with windows facing the backyard. I wasn't quite asleep and I heard this commotion of squirrels chattering with that angry noise they make when there's a neighborhood cat perched on the ground underneath them. I didn't think much of it until I heard this big THUMP on the ground shortly thereafter. I looked out the window and saw this dark, unidentifiable shape on the ground and figured I'd better take a look. KB and Nolan were outside raking leaves (in the front) so they didn't see anything, of course. I put on some pants (I get comfy when I nap) and shoes and went out in the back to find a giant, recently dead crow on the ground under one of the trees. (I'm not sure what distinguishes a crow from a raven from a blackbird, exactly - if it's only size, then this bird was on the large crow/small raven end of the spectrum, I'd say.) It didn't appear to be injured or mangled in any way. It was just dead. I don't know what the squirrel commotion had to do with the crow's death, if anything. I made KB come around and pick it up with a shovel and put it in a garbage bag.

Dead crow. Gotta be bad karma or bad feng shui or something. Yeesh.

-At lunch the other day Nolan kept making this "Ffffffffffff" noise with his teeth and lips. I tried to ignore it at first because I thought it was his way of provoking me - we've had a lot of discussion lately about why spitting at the table is Not Appropriate Behavior and I was pretty sure he was trying to see how close he could come to spitting before I started telling him not to do it. So he's going, "Fffffffffff" and concentrating really hard and I'm ignoring him and finally he looks at me and says, "Mommy, why are there no flames coming out of my mouth?" Apparently he was trying to breathe fire.

-Nolan is attending pre-school five mornings a week now - two at his Chinese pre-school (where he went to summer "camp") and three at a regular old pre-school. We've taken to calling the regular pre-school his "English" school to distinguish it from his Chinese school. I feel like we're Amish. "Be careful out there among them English, son!"

-There was a sign on the door of Nolan's (English) pre-school classroom the other morning that said "[this class] has 1 case of head lice." All I could think was "Already? Already with the head lice?" Next up: Pink eye!

-My Omega-3 vitamin supplement is made from fish, flax and safflower oils, but somehow, it's only the fish oil I taste when I burp later.

-If any one of the four of you who read this blog knows anything about Richmond, Virginia, please pass it along with all haste. Richmond is next up on our list of Places We May Move To. We're going down there the weekend of the 4th and 5th to check out the living situation (KB has already had one successful interview) and my assignment is researching beforehand to find out what, exactly, we might like to check out whilst down there.

-The ice maker on our fridge broke. This is the third kitchen appliance to break down in the nine months we've owned this house. Remember how awesome the kitchen looked in those pictures? How space-age and modern and upscale? Yeah, that's 'cause all the appliances are friggin' "prestige" brands like Miele and Sub-Zero and Wolf and cost like, three times as much to repair. So, we are back to making ice in trays, since $400 to repair an icemaker seemed a bit steep, considering we'll probably be moving in a few months. (What was also a pain was that we had to actually go out and buy new ice cube trays to use. What happened to all those stray ice cube trays we accumulated over years of moving from apartment to apartment? Who actually has to BUY ice cube trays? Don't they just reproduce on their own in the privacy of the freezer compartment, like wire hangers do in the closet?)

-My birthday was good. I got to go into NYC for a haircut at Devachan, which specializes in curly hair. Not only specializes in it, but proselytizes for it. They are very pro-curly. They don't want you to straighten your hair. They want you to be happy with your curly hair. The owner of the salon wrote a book about curly hair. They have their own special line of products for curly hair. I like them a lot, but a haircut alone is upwards of $120, so this was a rare and wonderful birthday treat for me. Now my hair has an actual shape to it, much more vertical volume and much less Rosanne Rosannadanna action going on.

Yay!

Thanks for reading.

You were bigger and brighter and whiter than snow

Okay, so these pictures are about three weeks old, but since I hadn't put them up yet, I figured what the hey.

It's nice that the baby is looking more like an actual fetus and less like a cheese doodle (which, incidentally, is what we've been calling it - "Doodle.")

I won't have the ultrasound that everybody's interested in - the one that determines the sex - until October, so my four loyal readers will have to wait a few more weeks for that information, I'm afraid.


Everything went very smoothly - this ultrasound was looking at the brain and the spinal cord to check for defects like spina bifida - and the baby looks completely normal thus far. I'm not considered a "high risk" pregnancy because I'm 33 (for a few more days!) and will be 34 when the baby is due. Once you're 35, that's the magic cut-off date when you're considered "high risk," for some reason. Like so many things in life, the magic age when you're suddenly deemed qualified for something (to vote, to drink alcohol, unknowingly put your fetus at risk for Down Syndrome) is pretty damned arbitrary.

I love this close-up of the baby's head. That swirly thing in front of the baby's face is not, in fact, the umbilical cord, although it does kind of look like that. It's the baby's two hands held up right in front of his/her face.




There were a couple times during the exam when it looked like the baby was trying to get his/her thumb or hand into his/her mouth, which was pretty cool to see. It's amazing how early they start making voluntary movements like that.

Also, look at the schnozz! This time around the kid definitely got Kevin's nose.

Alrighty, that's all I got for now.

Thanks for reading.

Have you come to raise the dead?

I blame Rose.

She invited me to join Facebook, the pervasive social-networking whathaveyou that seems to be all the rage with the young'uns these days, with the tempting phrase (and I quote) "Dru and I are on this, Joy. Come to the dark side."

So I joined, figuring it would be just like Friendster or one of those other faddy things that I would be interested in for a few days and then give up on.

But no! It has been...actually, quite good. Time-consuming, but good. I hate filling out all those personal information questionnaires that these sites always seem to have, where you have to concisely sum up your entire being, personality, life, interests, beliefs, pants size, astrological sign, height, weight, sexual preference, et cetera. Who can do that in a few paragraphs?

Initially I figured it would be a way to keep in touch with my legions of cousins, since they are members of the aforementioned "young'uns" demographic, and while it has served that purpose admirably well, it has also gotten me back in touch with tons of other people, from as long ago as high school and college all the way through LA and NYC and up to Boston. It's pretty nice to see those familiar faces and find out about what's going on in their lives. Some friends you don't mean to lose track of and are immensely happy to hear from when you do get back in touch...

Number one among them...Janet! YAY, Janet!

I know the four of you who read this thing know which Janet I am talking about and need no further information, but should you like to be nosy and find out about her life (does it even count as being nosy anymore when we all put our lives up on the internet for everyone to see?) she can be found at mrs-swank.livejournal.com.

We caught up on the phone this past Saturday, and I can't tell you how comforting it is to know that out there in Wisconsin is someone who understands why leaving an answering machine message consisting only of Homer Simpson's thought process ("Dental plan!" "Lisa needs braces..." "Dental plan!" "Lisa needs braces...") is an act of purest hilarity.

Yay.

Thanks for reading.

Inside you the time moves and she don't fade

Well, we had the first ultrasound on Friday (after much wrangling with our crappy insurance company over whether or not they would cover a first-trimester ultrasound) to pinpoint the size and age of the embryo, because my OB wasn't sure after the oh-so-fun manual exam and my periods were irregular before we conceived, which means it's hard to narrow down the due date. TMI, you say? Sorry. So, the ultrasound:

The day we had it done (Friday the 18th) the embryo measured a size consistent with it's being 7 weeks 5 days old, which means I'm a little farther along than we initially thought. Which is good, because it means this wretched period of all-encompassing fatigue and pervasive nausea will come to an end earlier! Woo-hoo!

For those of you who, like me, are having trouble visualing just what the heck is in those pictures, here is a photo of an embryo of the same age:

It's mostly head at this point, as you can see.

That little round ball to the right side of the ultrasound photos is the yolk sac (not pictured in the photo), which will soon become detached as it ceases to serve its purpose (which was to generate new blood cells - that function is being taken over by the liver and the bone marrow).

Kind of freakish, isn't it? Did you even know human beings had yolk sacs?

It was nice to get the ultrasound, though. I've got the symptoms and the positive pregnancy test and all that, but it's still great to see the little sprout on the screen to confirm that all is well. (And that there's only one in there. Which there is. Whew.) We got to see the little heart going wubbity wubbity wubbity, which brought an involuntary tear to my eye.

It's pretty damn strange to have another living creature incubating inside you, even one that you made yourself and greatly desire - I think that's why there are so many horror and sci-fi films that directly or indirectly reference that fear of the alien creature inside of us.

For (an obvious) example, the movie Alien. What could be more explicit than the worm-like chest burster literally tearing someone apart as it makes its way into the world? How many women have had that nightmare in the days before they give birth? And in the third installment, when Ripley realizes she's been implanted and throws herself into the big steaming vat of molten metal, the chest-burster tries to escape and she clutches it to herself in an overtly maternal gesture. Perhaps the aliens (or the pursuit and attempted elimination of them) are Ripley's substitute for children - I think she has a daughter back on Earth (it's been awhile since I've seen the films) but she's in hypersleep so long that her daughter has already grown old and died.

In any case, the H.R. Giger designs for the first Alien (or "xenomorph" as they seem to be referred to in much of the online fan sites I've been browsing through) are strikingly similar to some early embryonic photos I've found. Although Giger always said he didn't get any inspiration from naturally occuring animals, the similarity is still there, and is enough to make you think, "Just what exactly is this thing growing inside me?"




(For those of you who can't tell, the TOP photo is the Xenomorph...)

Or take The Fly, for another example (the 1986 version, that is, starring Ebony's favorite jazz musician boyfriend). The scene where Geena Davis is having a nightmare about her pregnancy with Jeff Goldblum's increasingly bizarre-acting Brundle(fly). She has a horrific labor and basically gives birth to a giant maggot, whereupon Brundlefly crashes in through the window and steals the little grub away. Although the scene doesn't actually occur in the reality of the film (she's dreaming), it is potent imagery nonetheless. What exactly happens when you combine two creatures' DNA to make a third creature? And how do you know there won't be some mistakes along the way?

I could go on and on, I suppose. Rosemary's Baby. The Omen. (The 1976 one with Gregory Peck, that is.) It seems to be a common theme in horror/sci-fi, perhaps because pregnancy is such a common occurrence in the world, and there are millions of parents and soon-to-be parents out there going, "What the hell is going to happen to us now? What are we bringing into the world?"

Or maybe it's just me, watching too many movies, as usual.

Thanks for reading.

There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do (once you find them)

No, no, I didn't fall in a ditch. I am perfectly fine, other than the simmering nausea and bone-withering tiredness.

I've just been taking every opportunity I can to nap, and that has seriously cut into my blogging time. And my fiddle-practicing time. And my reading time. I think I'd rather nap than do just about anything else these days.

But, thankfully, this only lasts another month or so (or it did last time) and then we'll be on to the second trimester when I'll hopefully feel much better.

Thanks for reading.

I said Ouch! This really hurts!

Well, the freaking out has commenced, of course.

I found out about the pregnancy much earlier this time than I did with Nolan (I think - I really can't remember exactly.) I just knew something was up and took the test much earlier, whereas before it was a definite surprise situation. And now since I'm feeling pretty okay and normal, other than some tiredness, I'm starting to worry that something is wrong with this pregnany. People always tell you that if you feel bad (nauseous, exhausted, irritable) when you're in the first trimester it's actually a GOOD thing, because it means the hormones are flowing and your body is doing all the things it's supposed to be doing - building a placenta, storing up energy, et cetera. So of course my emotional brain is ignoring the known fact that it's really early yet and is instead freaking out about the lack of sickness.

In other words, I'm feeling bad because I don't feel bad. Brilliant!

Some couples wait to tell other people that they're pregnant just in case something does go wrong and there's a miscarriage. We tell everybody we know on the theory that, should something go wrong, we'll probably need the support and good wishes of those very same people, so why not blab now? I'm not a very competent secret keeper anyway, and I'm certainly not very good at hiding it when I'm feeling bad (as KB can testify), so why even try?

That's one of the big ironies (or perhaps, to be grammatically correct and not fall into the Alanis trap, one of the paradoxes) of early pregnancy - you feel tremendously crappy, you're constantly exhausted, cranky and nauseous, but you don't LOOK pregnant at all. There is no way for anyone who doesn't already know to tell that you're pregnant, so no one treats you any differently. All you want to do is lie down on the floor and take a nap, but everyone else around you expects you to be acting normally - handling your workload, talking intelligently in meetings, not appearing to fall into a coma periodically.

This drove me crazy early in my pregnancy with Nolan - every workday morning I would walk the mile to the T station and if I failed to get a seat on the train, it was all I could do not to crumple to the sticky floor and weep piteously. But no chivalrous man would give up his seat for me because I didn't look at all pregnant (of course, truth be told, not many men gave up their seats even when I was hugely pregnant - it was mostly sympathetic older women who had obviously been there, done that) and I didn't have the self-possesion to say "I'm pregnant. Please can I sit down?" The time when you really need the break, no one will give it to you.

So that's the reasoning behind my tell-everyone-now strategy: Maybe I'll get some sympathy. It's all about me. (Actually, it might get KB some sympathy, too. Maybe I'll start marketing T-shirts: "I'm in my first trimester. Pity my husband.")

Of course, since I haven't started having any morning sickness yet and am torturing myself with the possibility that I've already miscarried and just haven't realized it, I can now also feel guilty (in this purely hypothetical future situation) for putting everyone on red alert, garnering sympathy and then failing to actually, you know, have a baby.

I can't win.

(Also, in case you didn't know, the reason you get so friggin' tired [besides the fact that you're growing a brand-new entire human being in your body] when you're busy placentasmithing: By the end of pregnancy, the placenta, on average, weighs between 2 and 3 pounds. That might not sound too impressive, but just you try spontaneously generating 3 pounds worth of blood vessels and connective tissue, and see how you fare.)

Thanks for reading.

Nausea, oh, nausea, and we're gone

Oh my.

(As KB said when I told him, "That didn't take long.")

I'm glad we had our Saturday night of sushi and beer before I found out.

Thanks for reading.

I get up again, over and over

So here we go again; the interviews, the real estate tours, the lists of pros and cons about each city, the endless debates, blah blah blah. All the stuff I thought (or hoped) we were done with, all the things I felt such relief last year that we'd NEVER HAVE TO DO AGAIN...yes. We're doing them again.

Tomorrow we drive up to Valhalla for KB to interview (all I can think is, "Valhalla? Isn't that where Thor and Freja and Wotan and all those crazy Norse gods hang out?" and so that Led Zeppelin song that has the lyric, "Hammer of the gods" is stuck in my head. I don't even know which song it is; it's the one that goes "We come from the land of the ice and snow..." et cetera.) at the hospital there; Nolan and I will be heading down to Manhattan to Fort Tryon park to hang out.

Then Wednesday KB has another interview at another place right near where my grandparents used to live, and then Thursday he has ANOTHER one at a hospital in New Brunswick. He has a week of vacation this week, thankfully, so we have time to do all these interviews.

I know if I were a more optimistic person I might be excited about the possibility of seeing new places, meeting new people, blah blah blah, but I'm just not. I'm terrified at the thought of having to move again and start all over again.

I think I thought that if I just wanted this (this being Princeton) to work out badly enough, it would. Or rather, it didn't even occur to me that it might now work out - that's how much I wanted it to. My brain refused to even entertain the possibility that things might not work out here. And we see how well that turned out. Wanting something to be true does not make it true.

It's weird how I vacillate. Some days I'm like, "Ah, what's the big deal? We still have each other, we're all healthy, we're (relatively) young, KB's a friggin doctor, it's not like we're going to starve. What am I whining about? We'll land on our feet." and other days I just freak myself out hyperventilating about moving and selling the house and finding new doctors, dentists, dry cleaners, grocery stores, preschools, violin teachers, FRIENDS, et cetera. I guess I need to get better at this process, because who knows? It could happen again.

So anyway. Whine, moan, complain.

What else? Nolan is potty learning (that's right, kids, they don't call it potty "training" anymore) and doing surprisingly well. We started trying to motivate him with a calendar on the wall that he got to put stars on. One star for peeing in the potty, two stars for pooping. That lasted about four days, until he realized that he wasn't really GETTING anything. So now he gets candy. We just cut straight to the bribery. If he produces anything in the potty, he gets to pick either six M&Ms or one Hershey's kiss. He wears either Lightning McQueen or Elmo big-boy underpants (Ha! I initially typed "big-goy" underpants - I guess they're that, too!) and those seem to be an additional motivation for him. We have to bring the potty with us EVERYWHERE, and for long car trips and quiet time we wear pull-ups.

So that's exciting. For us. And pretty much no one else in the known universe.

And his birthday is coming up fast! Three years old, believe it or not. (By the way, if any of y'all sent us a gift for Nolan off his Amazon wish list, could you let me know? We got a couple things in the mail with no sender listed (other than Amazon) and no invoice included in the box, so we have no idea who they're from.) We're having a par-tay on Sunday, so I will be sure to put up some new photos from that shindig next week.

All right, that's all I got. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Thanks for reading.

There ain't too much sadder than the tears of a clown (when there's no one around)

KB's mom left this morning. Nolan and I drove her to the Newark airport and dropped her off, and she is even as I type winging her way across the country back to the Bay.

I am bereft. I suppose I should feel lucky that I get along so well with my mother-in-law, and I do, but right now I'm feeling sorry for myself at losing my wing man. She's like a combination mom/friend/sage/mentor/protector figure in my life, and it's been a great two weeks having her here. She has endless patience for Nolan and all his foibles, and is always willing to get him when he wakes up, or play with him when he wants to play, or just generally take the pressure off of me being the only adult at home all day.

She loves to cook, and we always eat well while she says with us. Plus she's so considerate - pretty much every morning during her visit she's unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher, and just this morning when she was making herself a turkey sandwich for the flight home, she made an extra one, wrapped it in Saran and stuck in the fridge for me to eat later.

She just knitted another sweater/hat combo for Nolan, this time in a pretty teal blue and gray pattern that he looks adorable in, so he's all set for this winter. Nolan got so used to having her here - the first thing he said when we got home from dropping her off was "Where's Grandmama?" as if he expected her to be waiting for us even after we just watched her walk into the airport an hour before. Sigh.

Plus, she's like the greatest gardening guru of all time. She's been instrumental in planning where to put things and deciding what plants to buy, so any success we have with our beans, peas, tomatos and herbs will be mostly to her credit. I wish I had taken a "before" photo of the garden (although the camera was dead) so you could see how much it has improved. I'm going to take some extensive photos of the house (one day, when it stops raining every day) and I'll get the garden in there so you can see how much we've done.

So I am sad.

Thanks for reading.

With a knick-knack paddywhack

Well, we've been to Washington and back, and it was a great vacation, but it's always so hard to come back to real life once you've had a vacation. Erica and El Jefe were awesome hosts, cooking dinner almost every night and providing tons of distraction (bath toys! art projects! books!) for Nolan. Plus we had the whole upstairs of the house to ourselves - it was like our own little apartment in their house. We didn't do a whole heck of a lot, really. We went to the wedding of KB's friend Weissy (the ostensible purpose for the trip), and we made one other trip into Seattle to go to the Frye museum and of course Pike's Place market, but other than that we mostly hung out in Olympia. Erica and I got to have a girls' night out (which meant Nolan, KB and Jefe had a boys' night in, complete with steaks and bourbon) and it was soooooo nice to just hang out for a little while. We've been friends for over 20 years now (yipe!) and it's incredibly easy to fall back into our same rhythm of talking and laughing together. (The sparkling wine and gourmet food didn't hurt, either.) We almost didn't go out because we had all gotten sick (thank you, airplane travel) and we were kind of sniffly and sore throat-y, but again, the sparkling wine was a lifesaver. The girl-time binge made the return to Princeton a little hard for me - I'm once again reminded of my dearth of close friends here, and while I know things will get better with time and there's no rushing it, I still miss it.

So what else is going on, you ask?

Well. Our camera died, for one. The day of Weissy's wedding, right at the beginning of the ceremony. KB picked up the camera, pushed the shutter button, and it just froze, dead. So I am looking for any and all input into digital SLRs the four of you who read this blog might have for me - considering the Canon digital Rebel XTi, but willing to listen to other opinions. And that also means we have zero pictures of our trip.

And zero pictures of my seedlings, which I just planted yesterday. We had one of these indoor plant-starting kits that we, well, started before we left for WA, and while we were gone the green bean seedlings went berserk and pushed the lid off, they grew so fast. So I got the peas and the green beans in the ground yesterday, and I'm giving the tomatoes a few more days to get their strength up (and to hope the weather warms up a little) before I subject them to the same treatment. I put down chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging up the plants (because I was told that squirrels aren't really interested in the plants themselves, they just like digging in freshly turned earth - who knew?) and think I probably killed more seedlings trying to get them through the holes in the chicken wire than the squirrels would have. Sigh. So we'll see.

Aaaaaaaand...what else?

Fiddle lessons are continuing. My teacher said something last week that really struck me, which was "Musicians are athletes of the small muscles." We were talking about the importance of practice and how there's really no shortcut or substitute for it. You have to tell your muscles the correct way to do things ("No, ring finger, for C sharp you're right next to the pinky, not the middle finger.") over and over and over again until they can do it from memory. Even if your brain can think it correctly, that doesn't mean your fingers and arms can play it correctly. So you have to commit yourself to practicing scales over and over just like a tennis player practices serves over and over. There's no other way to do it, to the chagrin of slackers like me who have a dream scenario in mind of playing in an Irish bar pick-up band but don't necessarily want to, you know, work to get to that point.

(And please, can someone explain to me why the names of the scales never have anything to do with the notes that are sharped or flatted in said scales? G major has one sharp, F#. A major has three sharps, F#, G#, and C#. Why? Why isn't a scale with only an F# called F#? I think I need to take a music theory class.)

I guess that's it for now. Nolan is good, KB is good, the weather sucks, the cats are annoying. You know, the usual.

Oh, and we still have no working washer-dryer set up. The new washing machine is installed, but the old dryer won't stack on top of it without a special stacking kit and new legs, so I've ordered those and when they come in I get to find out if KB and I can do it (stack the dryer on top of the washer and hook it up, that is) ourselves. So I'm washing clothes and hanging them on a clothesline I rigged last week. We're so eco-friendly, if not strictly by choice.

Thanks for reading.

I got something that'll sho nuff set yo' stuff on fire

We were on vacation last week. KB had taken a week off because we thought there was going to be an opportunity to see Alan and Kathleen, but that didn't work out. So instead, we stayed close to home and just did a couple little day trips.

We went to the aquarium in Camden on Tuesday afternoon, which turned out to be the perfect time to go - it was practically deserted, so Nolan had lots of running around room, plus the animals seemed very active; when Nolan and my mom and I went last summer, the hippos in the African River exhibit just sat there (not that I blame them, considering the weight they have to heft around) doing nothing, but this time they got out of the water, walked around, splashed back in, swam past the glass, etc. It was great! Alas, we forgot our actual camera, so instead we have several grainy cameraphone pictures.

We got to touch sharks (Spotted Bamboo sharks), jelly fish, sting rays (little baby ones, with the stingers removed), lobsters and shrimp. I refrained from touching the jellyfish, lobsters, and shrimp. Tempting, but no. Nolan was waaaaay into the touch tanks. Literally. We tried to roll his sleeves up, but that doesn't do much good when he's got his arm in the water up to his shoulder. KB swears Nolan had his face in the shrimp tank. (Of course, we took off his wet shirt and stuck it in a plastic bag in the diaper bag, where I forgot it until Sunday when we did laundry. Mmmmmm, stinky fermented shrimp water shirt.) The other good thing about the place being deserted was that when Nolan had his standard No Nap Today Late Afternoon Freakout, there weren't that many witnesses around. We like to have some privacy when we beat the boy.

Then I got to have some Me Time! I took the car, all by myself, and went up to Windham Mountain to snowboard for a day! Huzzah!

The Windham Mountain experience was a wee bit on the lame side, I have to say. I mean, the jones to snowboard was satisfied, so just on that alone I would say it was a good trip, but the place itself was kind of "eh." I drove up Wednesday afternoon (I got to fulfill my desire to play Vampire Weekend on a road trip! Woo-hoo!) and got to the mountain around 5, only to be told there was no night skiing on Wednesdays (something not mentioned on the web site). Waaahh! I wanted to maximize my ski-time to drive-time ratio! So I drove to my hotel thinking I would check in, get dinner, read my book and chill out. I checked in and was told that the hotel restaurant was closed on Wednesdays (also not mentioned on the website, or by the person who took my reservation over the phone). Argh. So I drove up and down the "main street" of the town of Windham looking for a restaurant that was open, and ended up in a (read "the only") diner. Which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it was just...not what I was imagining. Then I went back to the hotel, took a bath and watched two episodes of "Ghost Hunters." (I love that show.)

I woke up at 6:30, thinking the mountain opened at 8, went down to the lobby to get my free Continental breakfast and check the conditions, only to be informed by the sign that the mountain didn't open until 9. 9 a.m.! What kind of mountain doesn't open until 9?!?! Sigh. But eventually, I got there, and then things were better.

[I don't have any pictures of myself from that day, because while I am a competent snowboarder, I am not skilled enough to take a self-portrait whilst riding, especially with my crappy cell phone camera (see above photos) or our chunky little Kodak EasyShare, which I did not bring since it would have gotten crushed the first time I fell. So instead please take this random screengrab of a dude (or possibly dudette) catching some air, and pretend it's me even though I have never gone that big in my life. Thanks.]

The conditions weren't great - mostly crunchy corduroy with occasional icy patches in the morning followed by tracked-out slush in the afternoon as the day got warmer - but I didn't really care. I was riding agin! Yay! There was hardly anybody there, so there were no lift lines to speak of. I rode the whole morning (about 9 - 12:30) with wrist guards (for falls) and without my iPod (to hear other people), just to be on the safe side. Had lunch (seven dollars for a tuna salad sandwich, eep) and mused over the lift operator (identified by his name tag as Javier from Santiago, Chile - why anyone from Chile would be working a tiny, crappy Eastern US mountain is beyond me) who asked me out of the blue, "Are you Alec's mum?" To which I said, "Uhhhh...no?" He said, "Oh, sorry sorry." And I was like, "No problem." but internally I was going, "Damn. I guess I still look like someone's mom (or mum), even while shredding."

After lunch I got my iPod out of the locker, and prepared to mellow out. One of the main reasons I love snowboarding is that it really forces you to focus on your body and what it's doing. You look down the mountain, you see the hills and the curves of the terrain and you have to simultaneously plan ahead - where to turn, what to avoid, how fast to go - but also to react quickly as things change and don't go exactly according to your plan. It's a very "in the moment" activity, and if I can hit my stride, really start carving and flying and I've got some good music playing...it's beautiful. That nagging voice in my head that's constantly got some yammering commentary finally shuts up for a while. There's no time for it, really, you're just focussing on your legs, your feet, the board, the snow...it's so peaceful. Or it can be.

But then, speaking of plans going awry, my iPod betrayed me. Big time. I hit "Shuffle Songs," which is pretty much my SOP - just give me something random, because everything that's on the iPod I put on there, so it should be good, right? Right. I forget sometimes that the iPod takes EVERYTHING that's on my iTunes when I sync it, no matter if I actually want to listen to the song or it was some random thing I downloaded (like...oh...say...giraffe sounds. Lots of them. Each one or two seconds long. To show Nolan that giraffes actually DO make noises*) eight months ago for some obscure reason. And damn if Binkley (that's my iPod) didn't keep throwing out the WORST possible songs at the worst possible times.

For instance: I'm getting on the lift when the lift operator decides he wants to talk to me about something concerning my lift ticket. I have to take off my headphones to converse with him. What does Binkley serve up? Amy Grant's "Baby Baby." Oh yes. Because, see, I was in charge of games at my stepsister's baby shower, and I made up a game that was basically just "Name That Song" that had 'baby' in the title. So I had to download a bunch of 'baby' songs to burn the CD for the shower. That's the only reason that was on there! I swear! I never once thought nostalgically about my high school boyfriend and his prediliction for singing that to me! Never! But there's no way to explain that to random lift operator boy. Nor would I want to - I'd come off like I have Tourette's, I'm sure.

And then, of course, as soon as I'm on the lift and swinging up over the trees and into my 7-minute ride up the mountain, what comes on? Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," which is still cool despite being used for Carnival Cruise Line commercials**. I want to point the headphones back at the lift operator and crank the volume.

Next ride down the mountain, Binkley goes on a Muppet Show jag, and I get three Muppet-related tracks in a row, the final one being Kermit's nephew Robin singing "I'm Five." Now, I love the Muppet Show, but that's just not one of the better songs - what about "Mahna Mahna," Binkley?

Now, I hear you saying, "What the fuck, Athena? Just change the stupid song if you don't like it!" and I agree with you...except. Except there are bad songs that are just lame and can't even be enjoyed in an ironic this-is-so-horrible-it's-kind-of-good way, and then there are songs that are sort of mediocre and can be tolerated for a brief while. And you have to decide - Is this really that terrible a song that I need to 1) take my glove off, making sure not to drop it off the lift 2) unzip my jacket 3) open my interior pocket and 4) fumble with cold-benumbed fingers to press the scrollwheel and change the song? And then re-fasten all those unfastened items? Or do I just suffer though it and hope that something better comes up next? And I, being a "let's just stick with the status quo unless things get drastic" kind of girl, usually just suffer.

But it was like Binkley was onto me, and kept fucking with me on purpose. Going up by myself on the lift, where I can't actually ride or move or do anything? "Grey Cell Green," by Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Woo-hoo! Righteous! Righteouuuuuus!

Going down the last part of the run to the lift where other people may hear what's leaking out of the headphones? "Bananaphone," by Raffi. Sigh.

But, in the end, Binkley redeemed himself. The lifts closed at 4 (4pm! What kind of a mountain, etc.) and as I got on the lift at 3:50, I knew this would be my last run. So as I skated off at the top and made sure my step-in binding clicked, I asked Binkley to be kind and give me something good for my last run. I start carving, and what comes on? Chaka Khan. "Tell Me Something Good." Sweet. Peace at last.

Oof. I've got more Nolan pictures and more events to relate, but it is 11pm and I started this post at 9:30 this morning. I'm spent.

Thanks for reading.

*It's kind of a snorty/hiccupy kind of noise, in case you're wondering

**Which makes it #2 on my list of "Best (Presumably) Unintentional Heroin References" in commercial product marketing, #1 being UPS's "What can 'Brown' do for you?" campaign.

My friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair

So here's a stupid quesiton:

(Or, at least, I'm assuming it's stupid. It may, in fact, be a wicked smart question, but I'm defaulting to my life-long habit of just presuming everyone else in the entire world to be smarter, cooler, and more competent than me. It saves time.)

What do I have to do to be "safe" with my computer when I go to a public wi-fi spot? Now that we have a babysitter coming on a regular basis (3 days a week, woo-hoo! For a couple hours, anyway.*) I would like to take my laptop to...say...a coffee shop (gasp!) and actually, you know, do stuff on the computer for a while. By myself. In public. With a latte.

What should I be doing so that I don't have some crazy Princeton student/hacker/mad genius stealing all my private info? I have FileVault. Is that enough? Am I safe-ish (from viruses, anyway) because I have a Mac and not a PC? I'm not going to be going crazy with the online shoe-shopping or anything (not in public, that is), but if I wanted to buy a book from Amazon, would it be a very very bad idea to do it on a public wi-fi hookup? Is there some way you can encrypt your transmissions?

I never use my computer in public because I'm so freaked out about not having performed the correct prophylactic procedure on it. I would like to take it out and about more (it is a friggin' laptop, after all), but I don't want to risk getting our identity stolen. Am I just being paranoid? Do all those people typing away in Panera know something I don't? Or are they taking foolish risks?

I need someone to just walk me through it, step by step.

I've tried searching on a couple different online forums for help with this, but most of the discussions are either waaaay over my head (mostly on the Mac users forums), or directed specifically at PC users.

As Nolan would say, "Need help!"

*I have to say, despite her absolute wonderfulness, I have mixed feelings about having Kathy (that's the babysitter's name) here three days a week. Even though it's only 9-12, I somehow feel like I'm cheating by having someone else take care of my child during regular working hours. Nolan is my job right now, right? So how many people have a pinch-hitter at their regular nine-to-five job? (Of course, to be fair to myself, I have to say Nolan is more than a nine-to-five job. I don't get a lunch break. Or vacation. I'm on call 24-7. So I do need some time to do other things, like mail packages and buy groceries.) There. I've just justified myself to myself.

Thanks for reading.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

Well, shit.

I have just had one of the strangest, most frustrating experiences I think I've had in my whole life.

I signed up for a course called "Second Chance Cinema" with the Princeton Adult School, which basically means me and 68 senior citizens in an auditorium on the Princeton campus getting a chance to watch films we didn't get to see in theatrical release. Eighty bucks for 13 films, only two of which I'd already seen. A good idea, yes? Monday night = Caroline's night to go see a flick and have some Caroline time. Yay!

Except today, the first film, "The Wind That Shakes The Barley." I don't even know how to describe it, what happened.

The curator/emcee got up and described the movie, did his intro, gave the proles and droolers a little background on Ken Loach and his style of filmmaking. All very standard.

The lights went out, the movie started, and the first scene was like Paul Laverty broke into my house two years ago and cherry-picked scenes from one of my scripts, inserted them into his screenplay, and made the fucking thing with Ken Loach.

I thought, "This is my movie. Fuck! Fucking Ken Loach made my movie!"

But he didn't, really. It's a very different movie. It just happens to have some of the exact same scenes I wrote in my script The Long Black Veil eight years ago at USC. This has never happened to me before - it was the strangest thing, sitting there, watching scenes unfold almost exactly as I'd imagined them in my head (and wrote them in my script). It was partly exhilarating - like, "YES! That's exactly how it should look!" and "Oh, perfect! That's it! That's perfect!"

It wasn't until I really thought about it a little bit that I was overcome with the "Oh, fuck!" feeling. I can never make my movie now. Or if I do, I'm going to have to drastically change several key scenes.

It's not plagiarism, obviously. It's just a case of two people having very similar ideas. And, the Big Fucking Difference, of course, is that Ken Loach actually went out and got the funds and the actors and the equipment and Made The Goddamn Movie, whereas, what have I been doing for the last eight years? Oh, sitting around with my thumb up my butt, thank you very much. And they're not really the same story, at all. TWTSTB is more of a political polemic (a Ken Loach film, in other words) while TLBV is a romance. A period Irish historical romance. Gah!

I guess I should be glad that it was a Ken Loach movie and not a fucking Ron Howard movie or something like that. Jerry Bruckheimer, worse. At least I like Ken Loach's movies. Mostly.

I'm so angry with myself. I worked so hard on that script, and it's been sitting in a fucking Staples filing box for six years, being carted around from LA to New York to Boston to Princeton. And now it's toast. It's dead. I might as well burn the fucking thing.

But you should see these scenes! See the movie! Go see it! Rent it! The hurling scene at the very opening - the whole idea of sport as a metaphor for war, for the stupid games men play. The scene at the ceilidh dance, with the fiddlers! The couples whirling around, and the camera picking out the couple we're really interested in, seeing their shining faces as they spin because they think they've really got something to celebrate, when in fact it's all going to crumble soon, and only we know how fragile their elation is, because we know what's coming. Those scenes. Those scenes are right out of my head.

Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh. I'm going to go kill myself now.

Thanks for reading.

You make the rockin' world go round

Oy.

So I joined a gym here in Dirty Jers, and a fine gym it is. I really haven't gotten around to much of the settling-in type tasks of moving to a new place (New dentist, new vet, new doctors, etc.) but I have, in fact, joined a gym, because I figures: New Town, New Life, New Me! Trying to be all the-glass-is-half-full about the relocation process.

The gym I joined is associated with the Princeton University Healthcare System, which is also what KB is affiliated with, so we got a nice whopping discount. Other than that, the main incentive for joining this gym is that THEY HAVE CHILD CARE, something that is essential to me, yet seems to be of negligible concern to most places. No child care equals no gym time for Caroline. (And how ghetto is it that the YMCA here has no child care? Was the Y back in Boston so terribly forward-thinking and awesome for having FREE child care for every family membership? Or is the Princeton Y so lame and recherche for not having it?) This new gym, this lovely place, has a fabulous child care center that Nolan loves (our first day there he didn't want to leave and cried when I took him out) and is content in, and really, that' s my only criteria, so I find it pretty lame that only one gym in the greater Princeton area fulfilled that criteria.

Anyway.

One of the perks of this health-care-center-affiliated gym is that every three months, you are given a free nurse assessment, a very thorough one, whereby they tell you your height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, flexibility, body measurements and approximate body fat percentage.

You are also given a free personal trainer appointment once every two months so that you can get a little guidance as to how to improve your "numbers." This is excellent for people like me, who always go to the gym full of "This time I'm really going to work hard!" intent and end up on the elliptical trainer listening to Tenacious D on my iPod for half an hour, looking around for a while at all the complicated weight-lifting machines, and then stretching on a mat and packing it in. This does not really spell long-term motivation or success in improving my health, so I'll take the personal training where I can get it. These people should know how to help me out, right?

Lord, I sure hope so, because the numbers I scored today at my nurse's appointment were sobering.

Look, I know I'm not going to be auditioning for "America's Next Top Model" tomorrow, and I can certainly stand to work harder at taking care of myself as well as taking care of Nolan. I was prepared to be a little disappointed with the nurse's report, but I didn't think it was going to be THIS BAD.

I have 33% body fat, people! THIRTY-FUCKING-THREE PERCENT FAT! I am one-third gelatinous, jiggly, wobbly goo!

Look at this printout:


Not only do I have 33% body fat, I have 33 POINT EIGHT percent, which means I am borderline OBESE! OBESE! Aigh! Is there a more frightening word in the English language? Because somewhere between college (where I distinctly remember being equally appalled at being 25% fat) and now I went from "Moderate" to "Overweight" and now I'm bordering on "O-FUCKING-BESE!" How did this happen?

Sigh.

(I love how they try to personalize the information by inserting your name into the text with their little fake-friendliness macro. Like, not, "Lose some weight, you nameless shlub." "Go to hell, soulless machine!" But "Lose some weight, Caroline." "Oh, thank you for the advice, you caring printout, you!")

Even worse is the flexibility rating:



When I was in high school and we had those National Fitness Test Days instituted by Reagan or whatever neo-Fascist thought it up, flexibility was always the ONE area I did well in. All the jocks and cheerleaders were racking up the points on the Flexed Arm Hang and the Vertical Jump and the Sit-ups, but boy howdy when we got around to the Sit and Reach, I would bend down with my head at my knees like, "Bang! Reach that, motherfucker!" Off the charts flexible! Well, not anymore. Apparently, despite my months of yoga and my genetic predisposition to flexibility, I am now only on the borderline between "Fair" and "Average." That, in my middle-child good-girl straight-A Lisa Simpson mind, means somewhere between a D and a C. Sob.

I'm trying not to get too upset about this, despite my all-caps and my profanity. My weight is just one aspect of my life, after all. I think overall I have a pretty healthy lifestyle. I eat well. (And before you say, "Well, maybe that's your problem right there, genius!" let me just interpose that I mean I eat a balanced diet with lots of whole grains and not too much red meat and plenty of fruits and vegetables and blah blah blah.) I have the occasional alcoholic beverage but rarely overindulge. I don't smoke. I don't do recreational drugs. Anymore. Sob.

So why am I so jiggly?

And again, let me just reiterate, I am not really too concerned with my health overall. My blood pressure has always been and remains low (90 over 56), and so has my resting heart rate (62 bpm, thank you very much). This nurse's evaluation didn't include a cholesterol check, but I've had it checked before and there's no reason to worry there.

I'm just talking about fat, I guess. One more American woman obsessed with body image. But here's the thing: I don't want to look like Nicole Richie or Lindsey Lohan, poor souls. I couldn't give less of a shit about being "thin." I'd rather look like Mia Hamm or Serena Williams. I wanna be strong. I wanna be cut. I wanna be able to kick some ass. Shit, I just want to be able to pick up my two-year-old without wincing and worrying about putting my back out.

So, to the gym I go.

Thanks for reading.